Really Means A Lot
by Rambutans
Summary: Sora stays home from school and Riku wants to know why.


**A/N:** I wrote this to tide me over from another fic I had been working on while my computer was being fixed so it may be more OOC than I would normally like and also there may be several maddening run-on sentences because I tend fly in the face of conventional grammar out of laziness more than anything else so sorry in advance but they're not going to be fixed. I hope you can enjoy the fic anyway. ;D

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It took a while to adjust to routine when they returned to the Islands. Even after half a year Riku felt restless sitting in a class room for hours on end. Recently he'd managed to quell the feeling a little. His leg no longer bounced uncontrollably under his desk during class, and he had finally managed to kick the habit of twirling his pen after it flew across the room one day and nearly poked some kid's eye out, but today his restlessness had returned with a vengeance and it was due entirely to the noticeable absence of one brown haired, keyblade wielding goofball.

Sora had been absent from school plenty of times in the past, but not since they had come back to Destiny Islands and never without telling someone _why _he was gone (someone who was usually Riku). Today nobody seemed to know what the cause of his absence was and Riku had nearly lost his phone to the keen eyes of Mr. Yarrow by pulling it out every five minutes to check for a typical sora-text such as, "guess who barfed 3 times 2day ;D," or "I have a fever and am hallucinating u singing opera ur pretty good." No such texts arrived.

By the time school got out, Riku had convinced Kairi to give him all of Sora's homework – which hadn't been very difficult as she had after school plans with Selphie anyways – and had prepared up to 2 fully thought out lectures about the importance of letting your friends know why you missed school to give Sora with his homework, neither of which would actually be delivered at the risk of revealing exactly how over protective Riku had truly become of him. Riku could only be thankful of the fact that he was at least aware enough of it to tone it down a few hundred notches – for Sora's sake.

When he rang the doorbell, Sora's mom answered with a sad little smile on her face and her eyes directed at the pile of papers in Riku's arms. "You're here for Sora?"

Riku nodded and she stepped aside to let him in.

"He's in his room, I think."

Riku hesitated by the stair case, then said, "Is he sick?"

Her sad smile returned and she crossed her arms, one hand holding onto her elbow. "Sort of," then her smile widened and she said, "I'm sure he'll be glad to see you."

"Oh," Riku turned back to the stairs. "Okay," he said, and began the climb. Sora's door was closed, which was unusual, and when Riku knocked he received no answer so after several moments of deliberation he said, "I'm coming in, Sora," and opened the door.

The first thing Riku noticed was that Sora had put a barricade of clothes and his desk chair in front of the door which made opening it in the first place kind of hard. The second thing he noticed was Sora lying face down on his bed, non-responsive to the world around him which included Riku making a noise of pain when he tripped over an old toy that had probably been lying on the ground in that exact spot for possibly years waiting to trip Riku and send him crashing into the very sharp corner of Sora's desk. Riku took a strangled breath to keep himself from yelling at Sora to clean his damn room (because Sora probably didn't feel like being yelled at right now), and then set Sora's homework down and lifted his shirt to check for puncture wounds. There weren't any but Riku was willing to bet his hip would be blooming tomorrow with a nice desk shaped bruise.

He huffed and put his shirt down. "Sora," He said. No answer. Carefully, Riku crossed the room keeping an eye out for any stray toys on the floor this time, and stopped next to Sora's bed. "Sora," he said again, and then put his hand on the center of Sora's back to check for breathing in case he was potentially dead. When it rose, Riku said his name again, annoyed, and shook Sora gently. Finally, this got a response which entailed Sora expelling a muffled noise of distress into his pillow.

The behavior was decidedly unlike Sora. If anything, it was like Riku. At least it was like Riku when Riku had been thirteen and prone to throwing dramatic and rebellious tantrums over things that didn't really matter. Riku had a feeling that if Sora was throwing a dramatic, rebellious tantrum, it was probably over something that mattered, so he sat down on the edge of Sora's bed and rubbed his back, a little bit gentler this time. "Come on, Sora. What's wrong? Why weren't you at school today?"

Sora made another noise into his pillow that may have once been human speech but didn't quite make it through the filter of feather down and fabric.

"Please use words, Sora."

With a loud sigh Sora lifted his head from the pillow and said with dramatic finality, "I wasn't at school because I'm the _worst_. I _hate_ beingme."

Riku was stunned into momentary silence. Then he said. "Are... You're not – you don't hate yourself."

Slowly Sora's head turned to the side, glaring at Riku with eyes that were distinctly red, but also dry, for which Riku was very thankful. If there was one thing he didn't know how to handle, it was Sora crying. Anyone crying, really, Riku was historically awful at cheering people up and despite knowing Sora longer than anyone, the number of times that Sora had needed cheering up were in the single digits and almost all of them had been handled by someone else (usually Kairi or Sora's mom).

"You don't know that," Sora said.

Riku's eyes darted to the door which he had left open. For some reason he was now wishing he had closed it. "Okay, maybe, but yesterday after you won blitzball you said, I quote: 'I'm better than you at everything, Riku. If I weren't me I'd wish I was me,' and that doesn't really sound like something that someone who hates himself would say, so…" Then Riku laughed and said, "Also two weeks ago you told me you were 'ten billion times more datable than me'."

"Don't laugh, Riku!" Sora said in the same tone of voice that he tended to use when he wanted to sound angry but was unable to muster the actual anger.

Riku held his hands up, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm just saying. It's hard for me to believe that you really think you're the worst."

Sora mumbled something into his pillow in response.

"Sora." Riku gathered his hair and pushed it behind his shoulder so it wouldn't fall in his face when he leaned down on one elbow. "Tell me what's really wrong."

One big, blue eye peeked at him and then retreated as Sora scooted backwards so that Riku had more room. Despite the accommodating gesture, the next words out of Sora's mouth were, "I'm not gonna tell you, you'll laugh about it."

Riku hauled himself the rest of the way onto the bed, laying on his stomach, propped up by his arms. "I wouldn't laugh, Sora."

Sora's head darted up and declared, "You just did Riku!" then fell back down on the bed with a huff. "You just laughed two seconds ago!" he moaned into his pillow.

"Okay well I wasn't laughing _at_ you, it was a joke, literally a joke that _you_ made. Come on, Sora, I wouldn't laugh about something serious…"

Sora turned to look at him with a frown and said, "This is serious but you'd think it was a joke and then you'd laugh!"

Riku matched his expression. "Not now that I know it's serious! Jeez, Sora!" Sora only stared at him, so Riku added, "Look, Sora, if it's serious to you it's serious to me, okay? I won't laugh, I swear."

Sora's furrowed eyebrows and downturned mouth softened instantly into pink tinted cheeks and he hefted himself onto his elbows and looked down at his pillow. "I really like you, Riku…"

Once again Riku's eyes darted to the door, but he kept his head forward and said, "Well… um, thanks… Are you going to tell me what's wrong, now?"

Sora lifted his head and looked at Riku the same way a person looks at a baby that has just spit up its breakfast. "I knew it." he said and buried his head in his hands. "Riku you're so dumb, _that's_ what's wrong!"

"Excuse me, how is that bad? Aren't we supposed to be best friends?"

Sora groaned. "I said I _really_ like you! _Really_, Riku!"

"Okay? So you skipped school and laid in bed all day because you like me? I mean, I'm flattered, Sora, but that seems like an overreaction."

"Are you deaf, Riku? Did your brain fall out your ears and clog them up?"

"Hey-!,"

"I like you _a lot_!"

"Okay, what does that mean, though? D-do you mean-,"

Sora cut him off with a loud groan and his arms flailed against the pillow for a moment before he finally pushed himself up and said a little louder than Riku would have liked, "It means I think about doing the nasty with you _all the time_ and I always want to kiss you because your dumb face looks so nice and you always smell really, really good!" After a moment of horrified silence he added, a little quieter this time, "And I skipped school today because yesterday when we were sparring on the play island you tackled me and I had the hugest boner in the entire universe and I thought for sure you had noticed but _you clearly didn't_."

"Oh…" Riku stared at Sora's headboard acutely aware of Sora in the corner of his eye watching him and biting his lip with pink cheeks and arched eyebrows and acutely aware of the fact that he had to say something at _some point_ but completely unable to form a reply because the number of possible responses were so numerous and all of them were racing through his head at the speed of sound.

Sora whispered, "You smell good _right now_, Riku." Then he said "Have you ever been sweaty in your whole _life_? Because I've known you for all of it and I can't think of _one time_ when you've been sweaty."

Finally Riku took a shaky breath and ran a hand through his hair, "I mean… I took a shower this morning. I get my shampoo at the pharmacy by uncle Joe's shop. Also for the record I was pretty sweaty after we fought Xemnas."

Sora made a sad noise in the back of his throat and said, "Yeah but I was sweaty _too_, ugh, Riku stop changing the subject!"

"You're the one who said I smelled good?"

"I want to be boyfriends with you!" Sora stretched his arms toward the head board in some kind of dramatic gesture. "Don't you have anything to say about that?" he asked, leaning his head to the side to look up at Riku.

After a moment, Riku shrugged slowly and with a great amount of effort managed to mutter, "In ninth grade I tried to kiss you like four different times but I chickened out for three of them and the other one I think you thought I was coming in for a hug so… I just… went with it. I sort of gave up after that."

The bed shook when Sora pushed himself up. "Are you kidding me? I'll pummel you into the ground if you're kidding about this…" Sora said.

Riku shook his head. "I'm not kidding. I kind of always thought you liked Kairi, so,"

"We could have been making out since _ninth grade_?" Sora said and grabbed the back of Riku's shirt. "Oh my god, Riku what are you _waiting_ for? Kiss me _right now_!"

"Oh-,"

"No, no, wait, _I'll _do it," Then Sora surged forward, crushing Riku's lips against his teeth which hurt more than anything and Riku voiced this by making a vague noise of distress before Sora let up a little and muttered, "Sorry, I was excited," against Riku's mouth.

Riku was about to tell him it was fine, but Sora pushed forward again, gentler this time, and Riku figured it could probably wait, at least until he remembered that he had left Sora's door open or until Sora put his hand on Riku's hip and Riku yelped with as little dignity as possible and decided that now was an okay time to yell at Sora about cleaning his room. Whichever came first.


End file.
